“I shall hardly afford another,” said he, “not after you sold those diamonds to my lady. The white stone is very pretty, but who ever heard of diamonds in that bright shade of yellow?”
“Such diamonds are rare,” said I. “That makes them valuable.”
His look was skeptical. “Possibly so, but it was a lot to pay for a pair of ear-pickes.”
Her Grace was quick to speak up. “If you like not those stones, Sir Edelmir, I might take them. I think they would suit me.”
He gave an easy laugh. “Nay, Your Grace,” he said. “My lady likes them too well, and does not rank my opinion.”
“Perhaps in this case,” said the duchess, “she is right to do so.”
“That may be,” said Sir Edelmir, and, smiling, he gave us his adieu.
I thanked the duchess for her spirited defense of the diamonds.
“I should like to own them,” said she. “I am sorry that Sir Edelmir does not know their worth.”
My mind had turned to the message Sir Edelmir had brought. “The Burning Bull Festival,” I mused. “That is nearly two weeks from now. These knights are in no hurry to find the worm.”
“Perhaps that is wisdom,” said the duchess.
“It will give me more time to prepare,” said I, “and to reacquaint myself with the arts of weapons.”
“I should buy myself a large shield, were I you,” said the duke.
“I know not how to fight with a shield,” said I.
“You need no training to hide behind it,” said His Grace. “If you are to avoid the fiery breath, you need a wall to shelter behind.”
This reasoning made uncommon sense, and I said so. “You might also consider draping yourself in wet cloths,” the duke added. “And your horse as well.”
“You are an uncommon great resource for a knight-errant,” I said.
“My father knew the last great dragon-slayer of the realm, Lawton Triphorne,” said the duke. “And I was told he always drenched himself thoroughly before a fight. He also soused the padding beneath his armor.”
“With your guidance,” said I, “I believe I may survive this adventure.”
The duke’s advice, I thought, would be of great service.
But I would never have volunteered for this mission if I had not already had a scheme or two of my own.
* * *
I made the most of the time before the festival of the Burning Bull: I put aside tennis lessons and reacquainted myself with riding, and with the wearing of armor. I bought a shield and padding and thick draperies that would hold a great deal of water. I also acquired a small wagon with a canvas top to carry supplies and stores of food for the journey. My experience in the cavalry, as secretary of the Utterback Troop, stood me in good stead, for I knew how to provision a journey.
I consulted with Coronel Lipton, and with Alaron Mountmirail the engineer, who had produced the first version of my grinder. It looked like a wooden box with an iron handle, and it crushed oak galls with ease, but the result was too coarse.
“To add a fine grinder would result in too complex a mechanism,” said Mountmirail. “It might be simpler to have two grinders, one for coarse, one for fine.”
“Perhaps something like the grindstones of a mill?” I said.
He grew intrigued. “We would need small millstones only. Do we know anyone who makes millstones?”
“Unless you can find someone with that skill,” said I, “build the fine grinder, and then we may consider a mill later.”
The court did a deal of hunting in the autumn, and I decided to join them when I could, by way of exercising my riding skills. I rode my charger Phrenzy that had brought me through the fighting at Exton Scales, and he tore through the woods and over the jumps with a vicious, sullen, persistent fury that more than justified his name. I don’t know if my riding improved, but after the terrors of one such hunt I feared the dragon less.
I did not attempt to teach Phrenzy any of the feats of the horse-ballet. He might leap or rear or kick or dance, but only when he willed it: My own commands were received with the contempt they probably deserved.
Because I knew that horses were mortal, and horses on campaign doubly so, I bought another charger called Spitfire that was scarcely less belligerent than Phrenzy, along with a palfrey for its peaceful glide over the roadway. All, along with the wagon’s draught horses and the sumpter mules, were under the care of my groom Oscar, who had looked after my beasts since I served in the Utterback Troop.
I received a letter from Kevin Spellman, and he informed me that the insurors had finally paid out on the loss of Royal Stilwell, and that our partnership’s exchequer was enriched by 19,436 royals, eight crowns, and a halfpenny. Most of this would be spent on a new, large galleon to replace Stilwell, intended for the long trade to Tabarzam and the Candara Coast.
Our other large ship, originally named after the arch-rebel Lady Tern but renamed Sovereign out of discretion, was now provisioning for that same journey, under Captain Gaunt. To him I sent some private monies, so that he might replace the gems in my strongbox. He had been privy to the business I had conducted in Tabarzam, and I trusted he would prove a canny enough agent in those foreign lands.
From the profits I sent money to Ethlebight, to relieve the suffering of those who would go hungry on account of the great storm. The price of grain had almost doubled in the kingdom, and everywhere the poor complained for lack of bread.
Lady Westley came to visit when she could, and wore her diamonds for a select audience of one.
There was one more regatta before the festival of the Burning Bull, this with the galleys under sail for the entirety of the course. This meant that one leg of the triangular route would be into the wind, which would necessitate a good deal of tacking back and forth. My crew of professional sailors, drilled by me and by Boatswain Lepalik, performed with faultless skill, and I stood to take the pennant until a bobolyne marquess from Loretto swerved in my way and would not surrender the right of way to me, even though he was on the larboard tack and I on the starboard. Because of milord’s ignorance, I was forced to come about to avoid collision, and finished second, after His Grace of Roundsilver.
You find it amusing, I see, that I hold so firmly to the rule book, when I have made so much of my reputation by defying custom. Yet when I choose to flout convention, I at least understand the convention I am flouting.
I feel that one should have perfect command of the rule book before throwing it away. That should itself be a rule.
Due to my encounter with the blundering captain I was not in the best of spirits the next day, which was the Burning Bull Festival, which opened with a parade in Howel sponsored by the guilds. Their floats came down the street, each with its orchestra or choir or a troupe of acrobats, or with actors performing a playlet of some fantastical legend. The equestrians of the horse-ballet took part, and they performed some of their tricks, to the crowd’s great enthusiasm. After their command performance before the court they had continued to perform in the stadium, and had become wildly popular. I could not imagine this pleased at all the playwright Blackwell.
After the parade the crowd went to the stadium for the main entertainment. There were more acrobats and songsters, along with ribald comedians performing gigues and knocking each other on the pate. Then the bull was brought in, a magnificent animal with a vast spread of horns all wrapped in straw and tallow, and led into a pen.
A chant began to spread over the crowd. “Red day bring the new day! Red day bring the new day!” The chant rose up and up, sounding through the cool autumn air. Men left their seats and jumped down into the stadium. They leaped and danced and chanted, and for a moment I thought there would be a riot.
The chant rose to a peak. Then a torch was touched to the bull’s horns, and the little pen opened as the horns were wreathed in flame.
The bull went mad, of course, and dashed into the stadium, through the crowd of jack-a-dandies, swashbucklers, and runagates who had floc
ked onto the field in order to defy fate and demonstrate their courage. The men roared and scattered. I saw one man tossed from the horns high into the air, to land lifeless on the sand like a straw poppet. Others were trampled or knocked down before the fires burned down and the bull, trembling and sweating but having suffered little in the way of permanent injury, was led off to honorable retirement.
I have since inquired as to the origin of this ritual, for we have nothing like it in Fornland, but no one could enlighten me. It is of such an ancient foundation that its purpose and intention is obscure, and no one has seen the rite performed anywhere but Howel. Yet it is enacted on the first of November, which by our old calendar was the first day of winter, and I suspect it was intended somehow to preserve the sun over the dark wintertide. And of course it is a blood sacrifice, though if the crowd is lucky, it need not be a fatal one.
Because of the heathen origins of the ritual, our pious king and queen did not attend, and the lord mayor presided over the event. I did see a number of monks in the throng, so the prohibition was not universal.
I learned afterward the identity of the man who was gored: Sir Albert Winstead, who was to quest for the dragon the next day. He died a few hours after the festival ended. Our company was reduced to eleven before we had even set out.
Perhaps this meant we would have no luck with fire-beasts. The omen oppressed our spirits as we assembled the next morning at Oliver’s Cross south of town, and our spirits were further depressed by the weather, which was chill, and the rain, which fell in a continuous mizzle all the day long. My crooked finger ached. I was not the only knight who had brought his own wagon, for some of the others seemed to have brought a small village with them; but I was the only man who had brought his own minstrel. For I had asked Goodman Knott to accompany the journey, and to provide entertainment as we crossed the countryside.
It had occurred to me, after Lady Westley brought up the matter, that I could make songs on myself, or at least that Knott could. And if I killed the fire-drake, I would quite properly deserve a laudatory ballad.
Not that anyone felt like singing as we left the crossroads and turned southeast along the right bank of the Dordelle. The rain pattered on my broad hat and on the oilskins I wore over my old cheviot overcoat. The river was gray and turbid and speckled with raindrops.
We came to an inn mid-afternoon, and as everyone was tired of riding in the rain, the decision was to halt. I viewed my bed with a careful eye, on the alert for fleas or lice, but this close to the capital the inns were very clean. That evening in the common room, the others were polite but for the most part ignored me. Some were the sons of lords, and most were knights of the great orders of chivalry; whereas I was a mere knight-bachelor and the son of a butcher. No king or queen had knocked me on the shoulder with a sword, and I wore no ribbon across my chest. I wore a duke’s ransom on my fingers, but no one was interested in buying gems, and I had not brought my strongbox, in any case.
Yet I had been knighted for military service, and of the Duisland knights I was alone in this. The rest had received the honor on account of their birth, and the great majority had been knighted on the occasion of Berlauda’s ascent to the throne, when she had handed such rich compliments to the sons of her followers. The two knights of Loretto had fought in one or another of King Henrico’s wars, though I understood that they had been knighted first and fought after.
Lorenso d’Abrez suggested that we fight the dragon in order of precedence, which would place him first, as a knight of the Seven Words, a cousin of King Henrico, and a descendant of Queen Margaretha of Steggerda. Once this became apparent, the other knights opposed his idea, and we drew lots as originally planned. Sir Brynley Wilmot, the third son of His Grace of Waitstill, drew first place. D’Abrez drew second, and I sixth. D’Abrez seemed content enough with the result.
As no one wished to talk to me, I called on Rufino Knott to bring out the guitars, and he sang and played his dextrous little figures, while I strummed an accompaniment. While we made our music, the heavens opened, and rain beat on the roof and the shutters. The others played cards and drank. I thought there would be a late start the next day, and I was proved correct.
It was midday before the company deemed the roads dry enough for our carts and wagons, and we set out into a biting cold breeze. It seemed that we had embarked on a winter campaign. We spent only four or five hours on the road before finding an inn. The next day squalls roamed over the countryside, and we spent half the day getting across the Dordelle on the ferry. The fifth day was bright and cold, but one of the wagons broke down, and we advanced only a few leagues.
Each night, there was more drinking, and more cards and dice. I began to think I had joined a traveling carouse, and not a quest at all. The only excitement came when Sir Edelmir’s horse stumbled while fording one of the Dordelle’s western tributaries, and he was pitched into the river. He flailed madly in the water, unable to swim. Aware that irony lurked in the very act of my having to rescue my lover’s husband, I turned my palfrey and was prepared to launch myself into the river to fetch him out, when two of his own henchmen swam their steeds after him and brought him gasping to the shore, his fine black hair straggling in his face like seaweed. Shivering, he was bundled into one of the wagons and changed into dry clothes, and by evening, having warmed himself with hippocras, was laughing about his misadventure. More laughter came later, when he lost a small fortune at dice.
The sixth day, in the forenoon, we arrived at Bonherbes, the house of Queen Natalie, Floria’s mother and the third wife of King Stilwell’s four wives. She insisted on providing us dinner, which dragged on into supper. Her Majesty was not at all disturbed by the existence of the dragon, and spoke merrily for hours, pausing only to ask for news of court, which news she interrupted with scandalous reminiscences of those being mentioned. She had a group of ladies to wait on her, and one lean gentleman dressed in a robe of black velvet, with a skullcap on his gray head. He was introduced as Doctor Smolt, and he spoke in a deep, measured voice, as if weighing his every word.
“Oh none of us believed little Botilda was really Count Conmouth’s daughter,” said Queen Natalie, “for everyone knew Lady Conmouth loved Sir Jasper Cherrier, and both he and Botilda had that blazing red hair. Yet Conmouth never seemed to know what was going on under his nose, possibly because his affections were directed at Lady Gildrum, and always had been.…”
Truly she was an indiscreet woman, though she never seemed to speak out of malice, but rather because she seemed unable to stem the great flood of scandalous reminiscence once it had started. Anecdote followed anecdote. I looked at her ladies and saw that some restrained yawns, while others had that glassy-eyed look that comes with trying to seem interested. I supposed they had heard all this many times before.
“It has always been an open question whether Lord Fonteynis was poisoned,” Natalie said. “But I suppose when my daughter the lady Floria is finally queen, she will have access to the archives, and we can find out.”
This statement so startled all Her Majesty’s guests that none of us knew how to respond. Her Majesty saw our expressions and laughed. “Oh, ay,” she said, “Floria will be queen. Doctor Smolt has cast her horoscope, and assured me this is true.”
“Is it not against the law,” I asked, “to cast horoscopes of the royal family, or to give out the hour of their birth?”
“Oh please,” said Natalie, “I certainly know the hour when my own daughter was born. And I am assured that it was an auspicious hour indeed.”
“Her Majesty speaks truly,” said Smolt in his deep, ponderous way. He stared intently from one to another of Natalie’s guests, as if judging our credulity.
From one of her ladies, I later learned the history of Doctor Smolt. He was a sorcerer and, being a necromancer, spoke to spirits. When Clayborne had rebelled, Smolt had become Berlauda’s philosopher transterrene. The previous holder of that office, a venerable but tedious abbot named Ambrosius, had been wi
lling to cast spells for the safety of Berlauda and the realm, but his holy office forbade him to cause harm through his magical arts, and Berlauda wanted magic that would blast her half-brother to ashes. Smolt was less scrupulous than his predecessor, and was employed for the express purpose of laying curses on Clayborne and his supporters. After Clayborne’s defeat, for which Smolt was more than willing to take credit, he was dismissed and replaced with a monk, but the crown awarded Smolt a pension, and Natalie employed him and gave him a tower in which to conduct his experiments.
This seemed unwise to me, and I thought Smolt, with his black robe and staring eyes, was likely a mountebank.
The next day was sunny and fine, ideal for the journey, but the sense of our fellowship was that we should continue to enjoy Queen Natalie’s hospitality. Natalie was enjoying our company and did not object. And so the day was spent in idleness, or rather in more games of dice or cards. The games played were simple, if not childish, and the sums wagered would have shocked the richest mercer in the land. I could afford to lose, but I misliked losing to a mere cast of the dice and preferred a game with an element of skill. I joined a game of nine-men’s-morris and won twelve royals, but then lost it again in a game of fox and geese, with seventeen of us playing—the eleven knights, Queen Natalie, and several of her ladies.
Afterward I settled into a game of imperial, in which—as the game involved skill and I had but a single opponent—I better fancied my chances. Yet Sir Brynley Wilmot, a knight of the Red Horse and the third son of His Grace of Waitstill, was a skilled card player, and after several hours’ play, each of us having won a number of games, I managed to win but two royals, and only because he drank a deal more wine than I, and allowed me to trump his knave.
He gave me his note with ill grace. I think he viewed me as a capon ripe for plucking, and was willing to put up with my undistinguished ancestry if it promised amusement and money. Alas for him, I thwarted him of his pleasure.
Quillifer the Knight Page 16